Today, most businesses will have a blog or articles tab on their website. But many people wonder, “What can blogging do for business?” And ultimately site there asking, “but really, what is the point?” Well, if you are reading this blog, it did its job (for my own brand). Blogging for business is a great marketing tool! But even more so, it is a great way to increase traffic to your website, and improve SEO rankings! BUT, there are ways to blog effectively — starting with scheduling!
Blogging is an easy way to reach your business goals. The only challenge is that you need a steady stream of content to engage your audience and lead them to take action.
In order to meet this need, you should create a regular schedule for gathering ideas, creating content, publishing it, and interacting with your readers.
Pro tip: There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so come up with a schedule that works just right for you.
Start with Your Goal
When starting, it is important to ask yourself the following questions:
- What do you hope to achieve with your blog?
- Are you selling affiliate products directly to your readers?
- Or is it a long game where you are trying to build an audience of loyal brand advocates?
It is important to clarify your goal first because it determines the type of content you will create and how you will create it.
Pro tip: You will need a mix of content that will help you reach this goal, and this has a direct effect on how you structure your blogging time.
Create a Publishing Schedule
In order to achieve your goal, how often do you need to publish? You should decide this first and then create your blogging schedule by working backwards, considering all that you have to do.
For example, if you want to publish one post per week, you will need to decide which day you will publish on, and then when you will perform each step necessary to meet your publishing deadline.
You might decide to post every Friday. So, this means you need to research and outline Wednesday, write on Thursday, and then edit and publish on Friday. Through experience, you might determine that you need an hour a day Wednesday through Friday. (Note that this is an example. When we write blogs, we are actually an entire week ahead. It gives us room to write, and reflect!)
Daily Blogging Time or Weekly Chunks
On the other hand, what might work better for you is to set aside one time each week for all your blogging tasks.
If you decide to publish twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday, you might set aside Friday afternoon for writing and finishing two posts. This might work better if you are unable to set aside a little time each day.
Pro tip: Scheduling can be a pain in the… well, you know! One of our favorite scheduling tools to use to help keep ALL of our business dates on track is Asana (others include Monday.com, and Basecamp.)